


Keeping Count

by implicated2



Category: British Comedy RPF, QI RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 22:57:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/implicated2/pseuds/implicated2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Later, when Alan started actually miming swan mating, Victoria leaned towards Jo again. “Here's an idea,” she said, reaching for the pen in front of her. “Every time someone makes a sex joke, I get a point.”</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeping Count

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to [marginaliana](http://archiveofourown.org/users/marginaliana) for beta-reading.
> 
> Contains various sorts of crude humor, swearing, and a brief reference to sex with animals.

By about midway through the recording, Jo was almost ready to concede Victoria's point. The theme of the QI episode they were doing was Mystery, but it had been nothing but sperm this, bollocks that, ever since Alan was introduced as Stephen's very own private dick. They'd made more references to sex in an hour than Jo's husband in fifteen years of marriage. Sitting to her right, Victoria was aiming pointed looks in Jo's direction.  
  
“I don't hate dirty jokes,” Victoria had said to Jo backstage. “I just think humor ought to at least be funny.”  
  
“It's not so bad,” Jo had argued, adjusting her fedora. But all evidence so far supported Victoria's claim.  
  
“Are you actually enjoying that?” Victoria asked Alan and Jimmy now after an especially long tangent about the mating habits of waterfowl. “Just repeating the phrase 'swan penis' until it loses all discernible meaning?”  
  
The pair had looked at each other and then burst out laughing again. “Yeah,” Alan said, sounding a bit guilty but nodding vigorously.  
  
“Pretty much, yeah,” Jimmy had agreed.  
  
Victoria gave Jo another pointed look, then glared at Stephen when he suggested that perhaps it was due to women's natural sophistication that she found these matters less inherently comical.  
  
(Jo demonstrated her own natural sophistication by observing that the neck looked like the pleasurable bit of a swan. Even Victoria laughed at that.)  
  
“Do you believe me now?” Victoria asked, when they'd moved on to a bit about DNA evidence. She had moved her chair in towards Jo and was leaning in to whisper in Jo's ear.  
  
Jo gave a careless shrug in response. Her own philosophy when it came to QI's tendency toward the lowest common denominator was _if you can't beat 'em, join 'em_ , preferably by saying something filthier than the rest of the panel combined. It certainly wasn't _go around whispering to your fellow panelists like a schoolgirl_. You'd never manage to get a word in edgewise that way.  
  
Then again, the odds of getting a word in while Alan and Jimmy were gleefully repeating the last name of a Hungarian murderer were fairly low anyhow.  
  
“Could be worse,” Jo said, leaning in and whispering back. “They could be doing accents.”  
  
“God save us,” Victoria said, rolling her eyes, but she laughed a little too.  
  
Later, when Alan started actually miming swan mating, Victoria leaned towards Jo again. “Here's an idea,” she said, reaching for the pen in front of her. “Every time someone makes a sex joke, I get a point.” She made a tally mark on her notepad. “If I get to twenty, you buy me a drink.”  
  
Jo snorted. “Brilliant. I'll take toilet humor.” She reached for her own notepad. “If I get to twenty first, you buy me one.”  
  
“I'll win,” said Victoria, looking up at Alan, who was still miming. “And if that goes on another five seconds, I'm counting it twice.”  
  
“Don't be so sure you'll win,” Jo said, as Stephen finally got everyone's attention to read a question about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's hair.  
  
He looked completely nonplussed when Jo answered with a deadpan, “I don't know, but has it got something to do with shit?” but Victoria nearly fell out of her chair.  
  
The odd thing about spending a panel show whispering to your neighbor was that no one seemed to notice. Jo did look up once, after making a particularly obscene gesture in Victoria's direction, to find Stephen eyeing the pair of them with a knowing expression. But he let it pass, his attention, presumably, taken up watching Alan imitate an elephant trapped in an airplane lavatory. (Point for Jo, then.)  
  
Jimmy must have caught on too at some point. “You're telling us to stop,” he sputtered indignantly when Stephen tried to rein some particularly repetitive chortling. “But those two“—he pointed across the stage—“have been whispering together this whole time. It's like being at school all over again.”  
  
(Jo and Victoria used their natural sophistication to look appalled at the accusation.)  
  
“What are you two doing over there anyway?” Jimmy asked.  
  
Maybe it was time to come clean. “Victoria's counting sex jokes,” Jo announced.   
  
Jimmy barked out a laugh. “And you think we're obsessed.”  
  
Victoria held up her notepad with the tally marks. “I'm certain of it.”  
  
“If she gets to twenty,” Jo continued, “I'm buying her a drink.”  
  
“If I get to twenty,” Victoria said, “I'd say you all owe me a drink.”  
  
“How many have you got now?” Alan asked.  
  
Victoria answered immediately. “Sixteen.”  
  
“So we can do—” Alan paused a moment to calculate. “Three more before you win?”  
  
Victoria narrowed her eyes at him. “If you must.”  
  
“Brilliant.” Alan looked genuinely delighted. “Sex. Sex. Sex.” He held up a finger for each repetition.  
  
Jimmy stared at him. “That's not three jokes,” he said, sounding appalled. “That's you saying the word—” He glanced at Victoria, whose hand was hovering over her notepad. “We can't say that word for the rest of the night, can we?”  
  
“No one's stopping you,” Victoria answered sweetly.  
  
“I am,” said Jo. “I owe Victoria if you so much as breathe the word.”  
  
“Can we act it out?” Alan asked. He held up his hands in the charades gestures for “one word, one syllable.”   
  
Jo interrupted him. “No.”  
  
“Does anyone know semaphore?”  
  
“Is it so impossible,” Victoria burst out, “to come up with something else to make a joke about?”  
  
The panel looked at each other in silence.  
  
“Personally, I like flatulence,” Jo said, giving herself a tally mark as the others stared at her.  
  
“I hear it's a gas?” Jimmy ventured, wincing as he said it. Everybody groaned, and Jo added a nice, fat line to her pad.  
  
For the next several questions, the panel showed impressive restraint. Then:  
  
“One final mystery,” Stephen announced, turning to a new card. “Oh, dear.” He put his forehead in his hand. “What do men think about every seven seconds?”  
  
Across the stage, Jo saw Jimmy and Alan look at each other. Next to her, Victoria was sitting up straight, pen poised over her notepad.  
  
“Well?” Stephen prompted.  
  
“Ah,” Jimmy said, “I think Victoria might know this one.”  
  
Stephen looked solicitously in Victoria's direction.  
  
Victoria tilted her head to give Stephen a withering look. “Well, it's obviously not _that_.”  
  
“It's not what?” asked Alan.  
  
Victoria ignored him. “You can't go around saying 'these people think about it this often and those people think about it that often, and we know this because we asked these people and those people to tell us how often they think about it and we're fairly certain they've told us the truth.'”  
  
“Think about what?” Jimmy prompted.  
  
“And don't go using tonight as an example,” Victoria continued. “There's a difference between thinking about it and making a bad joke at every available opportunity.”  
  
“Thinking about what?” Alan persisted.  
  
“Oh, hell,” said Jo. She couldn't stand talking around things. “Sex.”  
  
Everything happened at once. Stephen gave a moan of mock-distress, the klaxons sounded and the lights went down, and Jimmy and Alan, from their side of the stage, laughed, probably at her expense. Jo shrugged it off. She was watching Victoria beside her slowly draw a line across four hatch marks, then look up at her with a triumphant smile.  
  
Victoria had been right. And now Jo owed her a drink. _Just as well_ , Jo thought. _After all this, I could use a drink myself_.


End file.
